The Poitier Effect : University of Minnesota Press : 9780816692859 : 0816692858 : 01 Mar 2015 : The civil rights struggle was convulsing the nation, its violence broadcast into every living room. Against this fraught background, Sidney Poitier emerged as an image of dignity, discipline, and moral authority. Here was the picture-perfect black man, helping German nuns build a chapel in The Lilies of the Field and overcoming the prejudices of recalcitrant students in To Sir with Love, a redneck sheriff in In the Heat of the Night, and a prospective father-in-law in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. In his characters' restrained responses to white people's ignorance and bad behavior, Poitier represented racial reconciliation and reciprocal respect?the ?Poitier effect? that Sharon Willis traces through cinema and television from the civil rights era to our own. The Poitier effect, in Willis's account, is a function of white wishful thinking about race relations. It represents a dream of achiev